What beliefs are holding you back?

Right now in my business, I’m struggling with this major roadblock.

My #1 goal this year is to grow my email list to 10,000 subscribers.

I know exactly what I need to do to make this happen.

The plan is to start guest posting regularly on major sites with huge audiences. Over time those articles will become feeders, sending readers back to my site.

It’s really straightforward.

Do X, and Y will happen.

But every time I face the prospect of actually diving in and writing a blog post, I can’t seem to make myself do it.

Weird.

I don’t have trouble writing these emails—most days I really enjoy it.

Somehow this guest posting thing seems different.

Rather than just trying to power through and FORCE myself to write, I’ve spent a little time over the last few days sitting quietly with a pen and legal pad and trying to understand what’s going on in my head.

And I’ve discovered that the reason I’m stripping my gears on this is simply this:

Deep down, I don’t believe I will succeed.

There’s a voice inside me that’s saying, “You’re going to spend months on this, and it’s going to be a total waste.”

Now at this point a lot of people might say that kind of fear is natural, and just make yourself do the work and it’ll get better.

I’ve tried that, though, and I keep slamming into this brick wall.

So instead of trying to ignore it, I’ve started peeling back the layers on this “limiting belief.” And it turns out it’s made up of a whole lot of little beliefs.

For example, one of these beliefs is: “The sites I want to write for would never publish the kind of articles I want to write.”

See, I detest 90% of the “content marketing” out there. It’s mostly shallow roundups that rehash trendy tips and tactics.

There’s no *soul* to it—it’s just spam to get a cheap link back to the author’s site.

And the thought of joining in on the spamfest was revolting to me.

Once I nailed that belief down, I realized that it was something I could objectively prove or disprove.

With a few minutes and a little Google-fu, I learned several things about my #1 target site that totally contradicted my belief:

1. Even though they’re a general business site, they DO publish copywriting articles—they even have a tag devoted to it.

2. The articles ARE pretty shallow, but they hint at themes that I could go deep on. This site is open to the types of posts I want to write.

3. There aren’t a lot of copywriting articles there, but several of the ones they have published got a lot of social shares. People want to know more.

4. No one else is consistently writing about copywriting there. I could OWN the topic.

With this one exercise, my beliefs have totally shifted.

Yes, I’m still a little fearful and intimidated.

But now I actually believe that I can succeed here.

And instead of thinking, “Well, this is going to be a gigantic waste of time, but I guess I’ll TRY…”

I’m thinking:

Game ON!

I’m curious—is any of this resonating for you?

What are some beliefs you have about your business?
Let me know.